So, Ruth Reichl, former editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine and longtime restaurant critic, what do you miss most about reviewing? “The expense account!” she says, laughing. “Other than that, I don’t miss much. It’s great to go to the restaurants I want to go to and order what I want to eat. I was never a dictatorial critic, so I always ended up with the weird food nobody else in my party wanted.” These days, Reichl’s weighing in more personally: as a judge on Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters,” airing Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. “It’s hard telling someone to their face why their dish is a failure,” she concedes, “but it feels more honest, in a way.” Here, from the author of “Tender at the Bone” and other food-focused memoirs, are four favorite books.

The Gastronomical Me

by M.F.K. Fisher

I grew up in the ’50s, when Americans were not a food-conscious culture. It was a revelation! Here was a wonderful writer who loved food as much as I did. [I loved] her description of putting a piece of tangerine on the radiator, letting it get hard and crusty, then having the warm juice burst in your mouth.

Ulysses

by James Joyce

I know it’s pretentious, but my father designed both the book and the jacket for it. There’s a lot of food in “Ulysses,” including a moment when Leopold Bloom cooks himself a kidney and talks about the delicious urine tang. I grew up with cats and we fed them raw beef kidneys. Disgusting! After I read that, I bought a lamb kidney, and it was completely different!

The Little Disturbances of Man

by Grace Paley

I grew up in Greenwich Village, and reading this book was like touching home. There’s not a lot of food in Paley’s books, but every word matters. One story begins: “My husband went out and got me a dust pan for Christmas. No one can tell me that was kindly meant.”

The Breakfast Book

by Marion Cunningham

I talked to Marion on the phone almost every day for 20 years. She’d rewritten the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, but this is the first book that was her own. This is all-American food! Her raised waffles are wonderful and her pancakes, “heavenly hots,” are so light, you think they’ll lift off the plate and float up to the ceiling. I tweet about breakfast every morning — it’s my homage to Marion.